Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book.
Flash 8 Essentials has six authors, but the reader will not notice a definite change from one chapter to the next. Each author has already made a name for himself in the Flash design and development world. Two of the authors have already written a few books on this subject and one helped to create the current Developer Certification Exam.
Here's something to add a little laughter to your day...or a lot of laughter, depending on how you react to such things. So, just to play it safe, don't look at this in the middle of a meeting like John Dowdell did yesterday! Wait till you have a few minutes alone (or invite your closest cube-mates) and let it roll. Alan Becker did a great job updating the Harold and the Purple Crayon concept, infusing it with the frustration and angst that every Flash animator has experienced at one time or another. There's something really satisfying about seeing the Flash IDE under attack.
Adobe is sponsoring a Developer Week (12-16 June). This is a free series of online presos aimed at developers. Lots of Flex stuff, an overview of the Adobe Engagement Platform, and AS 3.0 for Flash developers (in case you haven't started exploring AS3 in Flex). If you haven't had a chance to play around with Flex, this would be a good place to get an introduction so you know what's coming on deck.
Looks like there's some good information to be had here...and its FREE! So go sign up today.
Well...Tinic Uro tells us that it may not mean quite what you think. In fact, depending on your browser and your platform, things can sway -10 to +5 frames/sec from your selected framerate. That means from the Flash 8 default of 15 fps, your movie could be running anywhere from 5 to 20 fps. Tinic gives the technical reasons for this fluctuation. Most of it seems to be throttles built in by browser makers to keep CPU cycles manageable. It makes sense, especially when considering, as Tinic points out, online advertising. But its still frustrating nonetheless when synchronization is important. Like most else with the web, user experience is not always as predictable as we'd like, but at least knowing the problems will help with finding the answers.
Check out Kinglong's Gradient Explorer! (The link is directly
to the SWF file. If you'd can read Chinese or want to use Babelfish on Kinglong's post about the project, go here.) It's a great way to experience how code works in
real time. See how and where the little numbers change the way things look instead of just playing around with
sliders...and you can always cut and paste the code into your own Flash movies too!
Finally someone has taken our advice and started displaying premium content via Flash video with embedded ads. As I
have said in this space before, content
providers need only create Flash based video content to distribute their stuff to viewers and then they can grab the
largest online viewing audience of any video app. Larger than Windows Media Player, larger than Quicktime, larger than
all other video types.
ABC has created and released a new Flash based video player for four of its shows that embeds video with
non-skippable ad content from AT&T. Users can choose from four differenct shows (Desperate Housewives, Lost,
Commander and Chief, and Alias) and view content in each with sponsor advertisments within.
Er, um... While flipping through my Flash search feeds today I came across a post by Jean-Francois
Arseneault at ArseNealt.ca blurting out how he didn't realize how complex Flash is. He downloaded the 30 day trial of
Flash 8 recently, installed the app and opened the IDE to its shinny new GUI in OSX. He was quickly over powered by the
shock of panels and all sorts of options to be found once inside and almost immediately had to close down the program.
He says he will grab a beginner's guide soon in order to get into Flash for real in the future.
Reading this reminded me of the first time I jumped into Flash with Flash 4 on a Mac G3 workstation with OS9. My
hardship involved jumping from Windows to Mac and jumping from limited Director 7 and Photoshop 5 experience into the
new Flash world. Though my jump from Director to Flash was probably easier than my original jump from straight web
design (only Frontpage and Corel, please forgive me, it was 1998) to Director. I lucked into jumping into the IDE
via an art class on Digital media and immediately jumped into scripting (using my background in Java and
other object oriented programming languages really helped here) and animation(Director and experience
with art in general helped here). And now I'm here... What about you? How was your first time? Did you get thrown off
track till finding that perfect starter guide? Did you dive right in and push out that first site or game or what ever?
Let me know in the comments below.
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the Livedocs at Adobe's site and looking over the Sound object. You can take a user's experience to
a whole new level with audio manipulation via balance, fade, volume and even dynamic control. I recommend even browsing
the Microphone object to look into ways to
create a visual experience that feeds on sounds fed into the user's computer (much like many of us are doing with the
Camera object for video controls).
I'm a little late on pointing this out, but its worth repeating it here again anyway.
Last week, Adobe released a couple of new templates for your Flash 8
IDE to address the latest changes in how Internet Explorer addresses active content (i.e. Flash). With the latest
update, IE users have to actively allow your Flash movie to play. The Flash Active Content Update
Extension will help in building new sites that avoid this problem.
If you're looking for help in
adjusting existing HTML pages, check out the Active Content Developer Center. And for information on the problem from the browser side of
things, check here.
Quasimondo has a site full of artistic experiments using Flash, Java and Javascript. His latest project dives into the
newly modified Flash 8 Camera object to create a fully interactive video game that is a knockoff of the pre-crime
system from Minority Report the movie (read the short story, its darker). The project grabs hand movements from the
user's camera to define how to turn a cube on the stage and even has a new option to add the user's photo (via the
camera) to the face of the cube. As usual this is not a spy program (as noted at the bottom of the developer's page),
unfortunately Quasimondo didn't pony up for Flash Media
Server.
Clive
Whitear over at Adobe Consulting's Work in Progress
blog just posted a really nice Transition and Tween Explorer. Not the prettiest app you'll ever see, but really
functional. Great way to learn some Actionscripting as well if you're new to the whole coding aspect of things. Have
fun playing with the effects, then cut and paste the code into your own files! Download the files
here!
Adobe should build this into future Flash UIs, similar to the filter explorer in Photoshop.
Last week, we all heard of the security risk posed by the current Flash player and I'm sure
you all already updated your web players. Mike Downey points out
that there are also updates for
the Flash 8 and Flash MX 2004 Test Movie players as well. So start your morning off right by patching away!
Yesterday Google debuted its new Finance page and today I got a chance to browser the app for a while. Google
Finance promently features a Flash based live ticker for any stock and includes a zooming interface on that ticker to
display financial data for the last three years. A list of news stories (found by Google News, of course) is displayed
along side the ticker and is even linked within the data at various points to relate the news to the stock. I can see
this as a developing application meant to compete with the likes of E-Trade for portfolio display via Flash (though
E-trade's Flash RIA is a lot more complex and integrates buying and selling). I would like an API though so I could
integrate the data and ready made charts into various sites. This would be great for internal live stock and market
trackers for major organizations. Want to see how the world views your company? Just keep it on your
homepage.
Read more about Google Finance around the web: Mike Downey links to Adobe's stats, Paul Kedrosky wants more and suspects this is a Flash
demo (he doesn't see the AJAX-i-ness that lovingly integrates with the Flash fun, I guess), JD points to the Flash
charting and notices the
XmlHttpRequest to connect to the headlines, TechCrunch gives its usual run down with links to
what the Web 2.0ers think, our Blog-daddy Jason Calacanis thinks it
is no Yahoo and wants to know why more sites don't implement Flash this cleanly (me too), and our blog-sibling The
Unofficial Google Weblog sees this beta as a good move that will possibly
beat out Yahoo's offerring (guess he doesn't agree with Jason).
Our
blog brother in design, The
Unofficial Photoshop Weblog has the low down on the John Nack interview by Inside Mac (download via
iTunes). The interview has lots of info on all things Flash and Adobe, including the Flash-Photoshop integration
and the future of the Mac Universal Binaries of Adobe products. Be sure to download the latest and listen to it
yourself.
Wow that sounds ominous doesn't it... Actually I just
want to direct you a an interview Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen did with University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton a
short while ago. They asked him all the important questions including how the Macromedia acquisition is going to change
Adobe's future and ways Adobe will be able to use its new found control of Flash. They get into a discussion of the
newly re-named engagement platform. You can either read the article at the link or download it for later listening.
Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book. 
Finally someone has taken our advice and started displaying premium content via Flash video with embedded ads. As I
have said in this space 
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the 
Yesterday Google debuted its new Finance page and today I got a chance to browser the app for a while. Google
Finance promently features a Flash based live ticker for any stock and includes a zooming interface on that ticker to
display financial data for the last three years. A list of news stories (found by Google News, of course) is displayed
along side the ticker and is even linked within the data at various points to relate the news to the stock. I can see
this as a developing application meant to compete with the likes of E-Trade for portfolio display via Flash (though
E-trade's Flash RIA is a lot more complex and integrates buying and selling). I would like an API though so I could
integrate the data and ready made charts into various sites. This would be great for internal live stock and market
trackers for major organizations. Want to see how the world views your company? Just keep it on your
homepage.
Our
blog brother in design, 
Wow that sounds ominous doesn't it... Actually I just
want to direct you a an interview Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen did with University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton a
short while ago. They asked him all the important questions including how the Macromedia acquisition is going to change
Adobe's future and ways Adobe will be able to use its new found control of Flash. They get into a discussion of the
newly re-named engagement platform. You can either read the article at the link or download it for later listening.
